Two Wheeled Carnival of Love

It's about Geography - or is it?

Not the kind of geography that Mr Higgins used to teach back in form five, none of that terminal moraine and nimbus stratus stuff, although I guess that kind of comes into it. No, I am talking about the sense of where you are both geographically, topographically, perhaps even where your place is in the Cosmos.

Basically a sense of where you live and what is around you. One of my co-contributors to this blog, OK, at the moment the only co-contributor to this blog, lent me a great book called "the Lost Art of Pedestrianism by Geoff Nicholson (must remember to give it back). The book is a rambling collection of musings and well rambles, both mental and physical in which the author details his need to walk as a means of getting in touch with where he is and derives a great sense of self and contact with other human souls.

Biking for me is very much like that, we live in an area on the North Kent coast between Herne Bay and Whitstable in Kent. The area we ride in takes in a wide area from Wye, high on the North Downs, to the dense forest that embraces Canterbury down to the marshes that run from Fordwich over to the small town of Sandwich.

By riding the lanes, the highways, the byeways and the terrain and experiencing the weather first hand from freezing winter to balmy summer you get a real sense of place, nature and topography. The rides add a different dimension in the many conversations that riders in the carnival have, from the chit chat about work to the outright wacky, and dare I say it, often made up, philosophical meanderings from Nietzsche to Aristotle and every bit in between - the conversations provide a kind of bullshit kaleidoscope through which to view the ride unfolding - wouldn't have it any other way.


I have grown to love these rides, they have become, without exaggeration, something that I have to do, each one weaves more knowledge of where I live, building up into a fabric that places me precisely in my locale as well as the universe itself. To twist the words, very slightly, of the great man Mr. Armstrong, "it is not about the bike" and also Mr Higgins, it is not about geography. No, it is bigger than that, far, far bigger.